Pain Tolerance and Athletic Participation

Using thermal, gross pressure, and muscle ischemia testing procedures to induce pain, an effort was made to determine the relationship between pain response and athletic participation by measuring the pain threshold and pain tolerance levels of three groups of Ss, i.e., contact athletes, non-contact athletes, and non-athletes. There were no significant differences between groups in pain threshold, but a highly significant difference between groups on pain tolerance, wherein the contact athlete tolerated more pain than the non-contact athlete, who in turn tolerated more pain than the non-athlete. Correlation between pain threshold and pain tolerance was .38 and that between the two measures of pain tolerance, .82.